After the Doctor
by Anrheithwyr
Summary: Rory is trying to adapt to life after the Doctor, but it is hard, knowing that he will never hear the grinding whoosh of the TARDIS or see his daughter's face again. It is hard, knowing that Amy still cries herself to sleep and Rory struggles to make a truth out of his new future.


_**I don't own Doctor Who. **_

…

_They'd been in New York for nearly seven weeks. He still misses the Doctor. _

…

Rory hated seeing Amy cry, even when he knew it wasn't his fault; even when he hadn't been the one to hurt her, he felt as guilty as if he had.

He hated the fact that he felt as defenseless as she looked, knowing that these tears weren't the sort that could be cured by a hug or a biscuit.

She was sobbing in their bedroom, at least that's what it sounded like, and Rory was sitting in the living room, watching her.

They were both helpless and so terribly afraid.

It had been hard to imagine life without the Doctor around; sure, they'd survived weeks and even months without him, but it had been easy, knowing that the TARDIS could just show up at any moment to pick them up for the next adventure.

Any day, any time, he could just be there, waiting for them, so they could go on some wonderful journey in a completely different galaxy, where the locals wanted to touch Amy's flaming locks, or admire the Doctor's screw driver or ask Rory about his particular gangliness.

But, now, a part of Rory's life was missing entirely. The Doctor _wasn't _coming back, he _won't _come back, and he _can't _come back. The Doctor and the TARDIS-Rory would never hear them again.

He'd probably never see River again, and he'd certainly never get to see his dad again. His dad…Rory had left without really even saying good-bye, because he'd thought they'd be right back.

Maybe there would be dinner, afterwards, and Rory and Amy could tell Brian all about their latest adventures.

There had been no rush, no worry about saying good-bye; he hadn't know it would be his last good-bye.

Rory could never go back home, not to his childhood home, not to England. His grandparents would be children now, eleven or twelve years old.

He couldn't go back to England, because the Doctor had always warned them about crossing time streams, and _dammit_, all he wanted to do was live normally.

He wanted to go back to their nice house in London and visit his dad on the weekends. He wanted to have a _normal _life, even if normal meant traveling around the galaxies with the Doctor.

_He just wanted to go back. _

"You're crying." Amy said quietly, and Rory looked up at her, startled. She had stopped her own tears and silently moved towards the door without him noticing.

Her eyes were red and her skin pink and flushed, but she seemed calmer now.

Rory brushed away his own tears that were stinging his eyes, and frowned. He hadn't wanted to start crying, not now.

"I didn't know you cared so much about him," Amy murmured, coming towards him, settling on the couch next to him, one arm wrapped around Rory's shoulder. Rory shivered, remembering how he had wanted to do this to comfort _her_ just a few minutes ago. "I didn't know you missed the Doctor." It was almost teasing, like before, but more of a half-hearted effort, like Amy had forgotten how to tease him. An entire part of her, missing, just like the Doctor.

"Of course I miss him, Amy. He was my friend, too, not that anyone ever seemed to care." Rory said gruffly, and he saw the hurt in Amy's eyes. She pulled away from him somewhat, frowning. Rory sighed. "I didn't mean that, Amy…I didn't mean to say that, of course you cared. I didn't mean to say that. I'm sorry." All he wanted to do was keep the peace, keep everyone happy. He was tired of not being happy.

"Yes you did, Rory. You're right….we both kind of acted like idiots, didn't we? The Doctor and I, I mean. Treating you like some third wheel all the time. I mean…we got better near the end but…we were really _rotten _to you at first, weren't we?" She set her shoes on the table, looking up at the ceiling thoughtfully. "Really, _I _was rotten to you the entire time."

"No you weren't." Rory said quietly, also looking up at the ceiling. "It doesn't matter anymore, does it? I mean, the Doctor's gone. It's 1938, we live in New York now, and he's never coming back." Rory sat up, and Amy gave him a hesitant look. "The Doctor's never coming back…" he repeated, as if the thought had just occurred to him. "He's gone, and we're stuck here….alone. All alone, Amy."

"I know….I miss him just as much, but we're here now, aren't we? I mean, it's taken me seven weeks to figure this out, but we're _not _going back, Rory. There's no way to _get _back, and the Doctor can't come get us. We're going to have live in New York, we're going to have to live in 1938, and we're going to have to accept this." Rory gawked at her, more than a little surprised. He was the one who usually consoled _her_, walking her through a logical argument until she saw sense.

Amy smiled, patting him on the back. "Look, I know he was your friend just as much as he was mine. You miss him, and I miss him, and we're all going to cry about it, eh? That's kind of unavoidable-we're just going to cry sometimes, Rory. But you don't have to let this ruin your life forever. You're allowed to keep going along here, in New York. You can keep living here, in 1938. After all, you've still got me, right? I'm still around to muck with your life, and get your socks unorganized, yeah? Besides," she took his arm in hers, kissing his cheek. "I won't think you're unmanly if you cry every now and then. It's almost kind of cute, as long as there's no bogies, or anything."

"Yeah." Rory mumbled quietly, and he smiled at her. He had never really considered the fact that _yes_, he could cry. _Yes_, he could miss the Doctor, and he didn't have to keep it all tucked inside, acting like he was okay.

Rory had always been the stable one, the logical one, keeping the childish Doctor and the adventurous Amy in check. He'd never really had a moment to explode, to get upset.

But now that he had that moment, it was nice to be able to just _sit _and _stay _in one place, to be able to cry and rant for a while without being bothered.

…

_They'd been in New York for eight years. He was used to the accents now. _

…

Rory kind of wasn't sure how he felt about this idea. Yeah, he'd started _suggested _adopting a child six years back, but now that they were actually driving home with a _tiny person _in Amy's arms…he wasn't sure so sure why he'd thought of this.

Actually, he did know why-Amy needed this. She _needed _to be a parent, because she'd never gotten to be one with River.

And, looking at the way she was holding the baby-Anthony Brian Williams, they've decided to called him-he knows she's totally prepared for this.

They'd been in living in New York for eight years now, and the two of them were fairly happy.

Rory had signed up for an internship at the hospital soon after arriving, and was now a full doctor, ("Something I have over that blasted alien," he liked to say) and Amy wrote for the New York Times, as well as working on her own novels on the side.

They were happier than they had been in the beginning-life was going well, at least. But still….a _child_. They had a bloody baby living with them now, and even though it had been a while since Anthony had been settled it, Rory still wasn't even sure what to do about the fact that he was a _father_.

No, Rory wasn't impossibly old-he and Amy were only thirty-two now, a nice enough age to have a child back in 2013-but here, in 1946, many people his age already had teenagers.

(But they had been looking for ways to blend in and Anthony had been the sort of son they just couldn't resist bringing home with them, with his bubbly smiles and happy cooing.)

Rory pulled into the garage of their house, taking in the neatly trimmed bushes and clean path walk leading up to the house.

He had spent hours outside each weekend, making sure the place looked nice and neat, even though the wind usually just blew the leaves back on by the next day.

Yet Rory didn't care if the yard was a mess or that their car was nearly half of Rory's age; it was _his _house, the one he lived in with his lovely wife and happy six month old son.

Some days, it was still hard to fully adjust to living in the forties, where people didn't even talk on telephones, because those didn't actually exist yet.

It was hard remembering that, technically, Rory's "birth certificate" claimed he had been born in 1914 to parents who couldn't be found, mostly because they didn't exist.

It was still hard to wake up and go downstairs for a cup of tea and sit around just _waited _for that blasted whooshing noise to fill up the house, only to realise that it never would.

Rory knew that Amy still cried some nights, sobbing into her pillow when she thought that Rory couldn't hear her because he was pretending to sleep.

He knew that she would sometimes sit in the back garden and whisper to the stars, begging them to bring back her Raggedy Man and her daughter, because it just wasn't _fair _that they would never see either of their old friends again.

And Amy knew that Rory would sometimes wake up imagining that the Doctor was at the door, or that he heard footsteps on the stairs.

Amy knew that Rory hadn't bothered to get rid of the twenty-first century clothes they had been wearing when they popped back to the 1930s, because he couldn't imagine ever getting rid of their last ties to their old life.

They both knew things about the either, though it was never brought up, because they were trying to pretend that they were simply just Rory and Amelia Williams, two normal, average people who had certainly _never _gone time travelling with an alien.

Maybe...one day...they might finally tell Anthony the truth about why his mom and dad were so much older than most of his friend's parents.

Maybe they would tell him about the grandfather who hadn't even been born yet, who wouldn't be born for another thirteen years.

Maybe they would tell him about the sister he would never meet, the sister named Melody who was also named River, who was from the twenty-fifth century and had been locked up in prison almost her entire life.

Maybe, just _maybe_, they would one day tell him about the man with the blue box that was bigger on the inside and who would drag them around on wild adventures across the universe.

But for now, Anthony was only a six month old baby who could pull himself up and sit propped up by pillows and babble in a language only he could understand.

Their son knew nothing of the life that Amy and Rory had lived before coming to 1938, before popping into New York against their will thanks to a couple of Weeping Angels.

And the Weeping Angels...Amy and Rory refused to go to certain placed throughout the city, convinced that every statue they had ever seen was an Angel, following them, determined to finish off what was left of the couple who had already lost so much.

Rory, in the beginning, would whisper to the stars and beg them to bring the Doctor back, to keep them from harm and to keep them whole.

But now, he begged to no stars, and he didn't imagine a possible future in which they were rescued from the twentieth century and brought back to the world that was theirs.

Eight years had been enough for Rory to begin to forget what his father looked like, or the sound of the Doctor's voice, or the terror he felt at the sight of a Dalek.

Eight years had been enough for Rory to slowly begin to feel like his life was his own once again, which was thankfully more stable than it had been in a very long time.

Because, though the Doctor had never meant to leave them, he had never meant to leave _anyone _behind.

It was just something that happened; it was a risk that was always possible when it came to those who hung around the Doctor too much.

At least they hadn't ended up dead. At least it had been 1938's New York, where they had a chance of something close to a normal life.

Life with the Doctor was dangerous and there was always a possibility of losing it all. Rory felt that they had gotten off rather light, being stolen away from their old life in the future and being forced to adapt to this new life, where at least they had a young son and a happy family and a stable guarantee of seeing the next tomorrow.


End file.
